It’s Your Trip in a Box: Baidu Adds Travel Features Before Chinese New Year

This past year we took a look at some of the features of Baidu’s (NASDAQ:BIDU) ‘Box Computing,’ an initiative to make its search box smarter, returning more relevant and often interactive results for user queries. Over on the Baidu Beat blog today, the company says that it has now added some travel-related features to its box computing arsenal.

When given a flight number it returns flight times, locations, and status, as well as last-minute updates like delays or cancellations. In searches I did [1], there was also handy option to explore more flights on Qunar.com, in which Baidu holds a majority share. For those wondering, Googling Chinese flight numbers will yield a similar presentation of up-to-the minute information.

And now that Chinese New Year is upon us (along with the world’s largest annual human migration) searches for train tickets or spring festival train tickets will produce a train search application module from which they can get the latest information on trains and tickets available.

You can buy your tickets online this year, but as we mentioned last week, the online service got off to a poor start. The AFP has an update on that situation today, which appears to be still having problems.